Winter Fun...

We were so excited when the parks baseball diamond suddenly turned into an ice skating rink! It was the first time in about 9 years that we had the "perfect" winter to make this happen. The past couple of years the city has done the "prep" work only to have January warm-up just enough to make the foundation for the rink melt. So you can imagine all our excitment when we realized for the first time that it was ice! (It takes many weeks of city employees working through the night to compact the "base" down with trucks and then many more nights of spraying it down with water from a fire hose.) I think we pulled off the road and just stared at the big slab of ice in a state of shock and disbelief that it was really there! That started our race to find ice skates (since the city no longer rents them), we called everywhere in the valley and nobody sold them or rented them, we were totally bummed. After no luck at our local DI, Eric stopped at every DI between our home and SLC on his way home from work. He was able to find skates for me and the kids (and plenty to share with friends) but none for himself. I feel so bad, I think he was the most excited about the rink, and the only one who hasn't had a chance to skate. He has taken Riley down everyday that he is home, and boy has Riley loved it! He has gone from being a little nervous and a little wobbly to racing anyone willing around the rink. Katelyn has enjoyed doing her "ballet" on the ice... I think that she would really enjoy figure skating lessons. Hailey thought that it was fun for the first minute and was then ready to head home where it was warm, if she would have agreed to wear gloves and a hat maybe she would have lasted longer. The ice rink in the park has definatly brought a little magical winter fun for our family this year!

Our Copycat!

Every day Riley comes home from school with a new book to read that night for his "reading group" homework. He reads the book to us and then our job is to sign a paper that tells the teacher that he read the book, if he doesn't return the paper with parent signature on it then he has to stay in from first recess and read the book. So last night I was on my own, Eric was at work, and oops I forgot to sign his paper before I went to bed! Riley noticed that is wasn't signed when he was handing it in. He didn't want to stay in from recess because he knew he had read the book, so he decided to sign Erics name for him, hoping it would fool his teacher. Well it worked (notice the smiley face) he was very happy to tell us that he went to first recess. The top signature is really Erics, the second one is Rileys... He told us tonight after he was done reading, so we wouldn't get mad when we noticed what he had done. Riley said that he chose Erics signature because mine was too hard, he knew that he could copy Erics! Though he is right... anyone could forge Erics name. The ironic thing about it is the name of the book he read that night was The Copycat! We better watch out, or he is going to be writting his own excuse notes for skipping school by the fourth grade!